Of all the novels that we have read in the past few weeks, Agostino is one that really resonated with me. As I read the novel, it was like a mirror to the overwhelmed adolescent me. Although the novel is relatively short, the storyline, especially the complexity of the main character’s inner workings, is well presented.
Agostino is just a 13-year-old boy, and in the legal sense, 13 is still a child, within the realm of the underage. It is worth noting, however, that at this stage of life a child also happens to enter a gap between childhood and adolescence. It is a stage when the child’s psyche is slowly approaching the adult psyche.
From the very beginning, Agostino considers his mother to be the most sacred, the most respected and the most dominant. (He enjoyed all the time which he spent with his mother) Because Agostino is unreservedly dependent on his mother as a child, his mother’s great image is very glorious and sacred when it is first established. But as the story progresses and Agostino approaches the adolescent psyche, he suddenly realizes that his mother’s love can be projected not only to himself, but also to others in other ways. This inevitably goes against the image of his mother in Agostino’s mind, leading to the disintegration of the beliefs he has always held in his mentality. Poor Agostino’s limited perspective as a son does not allow him to realize that ‘his mother is not only his mother, but also a woman’. As a result, Agostino does not have the ability to process and regulate himself, so he can only dispose of this great shock by expressing disgust and avoidance. On the other hand, the same is true for Agostino’s mom, who is also imprisoned by the single perspective of being a mother figure. In mom’s perspective, Agostino has been a child who has not grown up, so she acquiesces to Agostino’s ignorance about feelings and sex. But that’s exactly why the knowledge of sex education doesn’t guide Agostino’s growth in the right way, and Agostino can only understand it through his narrow/limited perception.
In my opinion, we are constantly learning and growing along the way, and every shock and apprehension of something that doesn’t match our own perceptions is a unique education from this society. Although, I can’t give a proper way to deal with it, perhaps that’s why every individual living on earth is ‘alive’ and unique.
Question for discussion:
…he had lost his former pleasures without managing to acquire any new ones (Moravia, 74). So he found that he had lost his original identity without acquiring through his loss another (Moravia, 78).
Do you ever had a feeling like Agostino, “had lost” something…”without acquiring another”? Or how do you interpret this kind of feeling in your own life? (A feeling of getting stuck? lost? misery? roaming?)
Hello, CICI:
I really enjoy reading your blog posts; the analyses are quite fascinating. Regarding the question you raised, I believe everyone may have experienced difficulties in terms of self-identity. For instance, during my childhood, I noticed about certain things that might not have been suitable for children at such an early age. I feel like I lost a carefree childhood and a life without worries. At the same time, I haven’t felt the joy that comes with growing up; instead, it feels like a kind of pain.
This book really fits into the common theme of limbo that has appeared in most of our readings so far. How in Proust he was in the limb between sleep and wake, and in the shrouded woman she was in the limbo between life and death, in this way, Agostino was in the limbo between child and adult. And limbo implies the loss of previous existence or way of being. So I think he definitely did lose his previous view on the world almost, the view of a child.
Dalia Currie
“we are constantly learning and growing along the way”
Yes, in a way this is a book about education… about different kinds of learning. The gang of boys “teach” Agostino a whole series of things that he has never learned at school (or, apparently, anywhere else). It’s a shock, but these are things he has to learn somewhere, somehow.
The book doesn’t really really tell us about Agostino’s father other than the fact that he is dead. That said, I wonder if the death of his father meant that he was worried that and therefore wanted to cherish his mother as much as he could – not expectedly in the manner he does in this book. He doesn’t seem like he grew up with friends or at least we don’t have that impression based on when he meets with the gang or what he thinks are his friends when in reality, they don’t treat him well.